Most Americans ask themselves, "How could someone do this? What madness?" The
more prone to self-criticism and reflection then ask, "What have we done that
might provoke such anger. Palestinians and other Muslims and Arabs explain that
it is our support of Israel that prompts this hatred. We do not understand the
misery that Palestinians live in under Israeli occupation, the rage and frustration
they feel. It is a terrible thing, what happened, but if you westerners want
to know why so many hate you around the world, consider that the Palestinians
suffer under this threat daily.

We need to consider both issues Š the motivations of Bin Laden and the Arab-Israeli
conflict in light of Islamism and its apocalyptic world view. Bin Laden is a
central player in a cosmic battle that pits the warriors for truth against the
agents of Satan and evil in this world. (For a good idea of what this vision
consists of, see the web site named in honor of Abdullah Azzam, Bin Laden's
(now dead) mentor and the founder of MAK, the predecessor to Al Qa'ida, http://www.azzam.com,
especially the apocalyptic reading of the present world situation by a respected
Saudi theologian, Sifr al-Hawali (http://www.azzam.com/html/dayofwrath.htm.)
He uses Daniel to prove that the second intifada began the "Day of Rage of the
Lord." See also al-qiyamah.org/al-qiyamah/surah_20-21.htm,
by a moderate theologian who dislikes the fundamentalists, but nonetheless reads
Sura 57 of the Koran as an apocalyptic prophecy fulfilled in the Trade Center
bombing.

Islamism represents what we might call a "fundamentalist" reaction to the inroads
of modernity. Assaulted by a multi-cultural, multi-religious and secular world,
with all that implies about the "relativity" of both scripture and claims to
absolute truth, as well as to the laxities of observance and morality that seem
so much a part of modernity, Islam has, like Judaism and Christianity, generated
revival movements that seek to return to the "fundamentals" of the faith Š Sharia
(Islamic law), strict observances and purity concerns, and an implacably hostile
attitude towards the secular world that undermines such efforts. In the case
of Islam these revival efforts align closely with political efforts to impose
religious uniformity Š the veil for women and public prayer for men Š and ultimately
connect with theocratic notions of state-sponsored Sharia (including the mutilation
of thieves and the execution of adulterers). This latter tendency is directly
related to the earliest development of Islam in which military conquest prepared
the ground for religious dominion (and only later mass conversions), and it
has intensified in both Sunni and ShiÕi circles since KhoumeiniÕs revolution
in Iran in 1979. Islamism represents the more intense and coercive elements
of this fundamentalist Islamic revival, holding out as a solution to the whole
worldÕs problems the vision of a global culture under Sharia.

The relative failure of these "utopian" religious ideologies (what we generically
call millennialism) in places like Iran, and their devolution into terrible
civil wars with devastating civilian casualties (Sudan, Algeria) has, rather
than give Islamicists pause, only served to intensify the belief that, if only
these things were properly done, they would work (i.e., Sunni Taliban rather
than ShiÕi Iranians). The political aspect of these conflicts has further intensified
around the unbearable blow to Islamic pride and identity brought on by the existence
of an autonomous (and modernizing) Jewish state in the midst of territories
under Islamic dominion since the first generations of the religion. The vision
of a world successively brought under the peaceful dominion of Islam (conquered
areas known as Dar el Salaam, the realm of peace), while it might have been
halted by the West, was rolled back by Israel in 1948, and again in 1967.

Such developments have sharpened the sense of assault by the modern West and
have come together in a ferocious apocalyptic narrative of the final battle
between good and evil in radical Islamist circles of the Middle East. For these
radicals, the failure of Islam in the modern world comes from corrupt monarchies
and rapidly corrupting secular revolutionary regimes. The West at a distance
may have presented a threat, but Israel represents a desecrating cultural invasion.
The Islamist narrative is not a story of the tides of civilization, but relentlessly
cosmic in scope and urgent in rhetoric. Now rages the battle between cosmic
good (we warriors for Allah) and evil (the West, especially its most Satanic
forces, Israel and the USA).

According to numerous apocalyptic pamphlets circulating in Palestinian and
other Muslim circles, notably Bin Laden and similar jihadist circles, Israel,
and especially Jerusalem is the center of this apocalyptic struggle. JerusalemÕs
(pre-Zionist) significance in Islam derived primarily from its eschatological
significance, the role that it played on the day of the Resurrection of the
Dead and the Last Judgment. According to a popular eschatological hadith, the
Kaabah stone itself will come from Mecca to Jerusalem on that day. In this world
view, the West, with its secularism and materialism represents a cosmic enemy
that must be destroyed, and Israel, with its control of the holy city of Jerusalem,
the insufferable advance column of that assault. As the rest of the world succumbs
to Western blandishments and corruption, Islam alone has resisted, at least
that element of Islam that has renewed and purified itself in recent times in
Islamism. The larger vision, championed by Bin Laden, however goes beyond this
fundamentalist revivalism so familiar to historians of American culture, itself
one of the most fertile soils for revival movements in the world. For Bin Laden
this is no see-saw battle between two sides, this is the ultimate struggle.

For him, Sharia should rule the entire world, a project he believes that Muhammed
commanded almost 1500 years ago. "Behold!" claims an early and oft-repeated
Muslim text, "God sent me [the Prophet Muhammad] with a sword, just before the
Hour [of Judgment], and placed my daily sustenance beneath the shadow of my
spear, and humiliation and contempt upon those who oppose me." But as opposed
to (what we can reconstruct so far) of Islamic history, this time the battle
is not merely conquest, but annihilation of the enemy. This is the apocalyptic
world of "convert to the true faith or die."

These are the characteristics of the most virulent forms apocalyptic violence.
As with the "first" Crusaders (1096-99), the enemy, demonized, has no human
traits; if they refuse to convert they deserve mass slaughter. The massacre
of Jews at home, of Muslims, Jews, and even of the strange Christians in the
Levant, were all signs of the LordÕs Day, the day of Vindication for his faithful
crusaders. Similarly, the 5-10, 000 dead Š for Bin Laden better it were 50,000
Š are a down payment. This is the first real blow of Armageddon.

So why the Trade Center and the Pentagon? Why attack symbols when you risk,
as the Japanese did, awaking the slumbering giant? Why the mad disregard for
the realities of the situation? Because Bin Laden lives in a symbolic universe
which he reads apocalyptically. Reflective apocalyptic violence, whether it
comes from an individual like Buford Thomas or Timothy McVeigh, or the leader
of a "new religious movement" like Shinohara and his Aum Shin Rikyo, views the
current (socio-political) world as great tectonic plates in immense tension,
and if the agent of apocalyptic destruction can only set off an explosion at
the very site where that tension is greatest, they can free the fault line to
completely realign the world.

How new is this Islamic apocalyptic reading? Significant recent mutations in
Muslim apocalyptic date back to 1979 (when, in the year 1400 A.H., Khoumeini
took over Iran with millennial plans for a perfect theocracy). In the last two
decades, as this active eschatology passed from ShiÕi to Sunni circles in the
context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this apocalyptic discourse has taken on
many of the traits and techniques of Western apocalyptic (Biblical themes, sophisticated
communication technologies). Al HalawiÕs book The Day of Wrath, for example,
is posted on the Web and its content is enormously sophisticated and eclectic
in its use of Jewish and Christian sources. At the approach of 2000, the Christian
year became increasingly significant for Muslim apocalyptic writers, who mixed
conspiracy theory, UFOs, and classic Muslim and Christian apocalyptic to target
Israel, and especially their control of the Temple Mount as the center of the
cosmic battle. A Zionist coalition of Christians and Jews, led by al Dajjal
(IslamÕs "Antichrist" figure), would trample Al Haram al Sharif in Jerusalem,
triggering the final battle. The "Al Aqsa" intifada, started in the year 2000
in reaction to the desecrating visit of Sharon. It set in motion the attack
of Muslim forces against the apocalyptic enemy of Israel. The attack on the
US strikes at the other "twin tower" of Western evil.

This kind of apocalyptic violence is hardly new. Indeed Western European Christianity
in its "middle ages" engaged in just this kind of thinking, producing crusading
massacres both against infidels abroad and dissidents at home, as well as the
totalitarian institutions of inquisitorial Christendom. One of the most important
steps towards modern civil society was to abandon such narcissistic, megalomanic
self-perceptions, and restrain religion from using coercion to articulate its
message. Unfortunately, we seem to have repressed the apocalyptic so firmly
in the West, that we donÕt seem capable of recognizing it when it reappears
elsewhere. And we donÕt know how to deal with the religious expressions of such
overwhelmingly anti-modern hostility to the demands of civil society.

How do we confront such a terrifying and zealous enemy?

By minimizing his fanaticism, and telling ourselves, without further investigation,
that such insanity is really marginal, the work of a madman? One shudders at
the cost of underestimating such implacable and urgent hatred.

By telling ourselves that our own sins have aroused his regrettable but understandable
hatred? It makes sense to take apocalyptic hatred seriously; it is folly to
imagine that our sins, however numerous deserve this hatred.

By imagining that if we could just get Bin Laden and some of his associates,
we could also atone to the rest of the Muslim world by sacrificing the sin offering
that their Islamists demand Š Israel? The Palestinians, after all do not really
partake of this mad vision, and would settle for satisfaction in their cause.
(As one European put it to an American friend: "When are your Jews going to
realize that it is their support for Israel that is bringing this misery upon
you?") Such thinking, as admirably self-flagellating or despicably hypocritical
and treacherous as it might be to the cause of civil society, is in any case
willfully self-deceptive and ultimately self-destructive.

And if we look more closely and see how widespread this virulent form of demonizing
apocalyptic has become in global Islam, from its fanatic core to a widespread
Muslim sympathy with its world view, how do we deal with it? No civil society
can tolerate active cataclysmic apocalyptic religiosity, with its dualistic
demonizing and totalizing violence against any dissent. And any viable civil
society must confront the less visible passive forms such belief takes and which,
under conditions of stress, generates its more violent manifestations. The USA
has those tendencies (hence the fearful symmetry of Robertson and FalwellÕs
reading of the attack as punishment for our sins of secularism), and we weathered
them at the approach of Y2K. That is the sign of a healthy civil society.

If we would rather not sacrifice Israel to the apocalyptic rage of Islamism
the way we sacrificed Czechoslovakia to the colder but no less ambitious appetite
of the Nazis, and we also do not want to tar all of Islam with the brush of
apocalyptic Islamism, thus joining in their dualistc thinking, if we want to
build a global community that has a chance for peace, then we must begin to
ask ourselves, and our Muslim moderate friends, both political and personal,
some very hard questions about their apocalyptic visions.

This forces us to confront secular modernityÕs schizophrenic attitude towards
religion. On the one hand, Bin LadenÕs kind of religiosity represents the worst
of what we, as a culture, renounced in the shift to modern civil societies Š
religion as a wielder of power in the name of a dogmatic theology that cannot
tolerate anyone elseÕs religious freedoms. The denunciations of religion as
superstition, infantile neurosis, totalitarian oppression, all stem from our
horror at the inquisitorial institutions and religious wars such fanaticism
engendered. On the other hand, modern culture is rightly proud of its capaciousness
and tolerance of religions, religions willing to renounce the claim to force
others to follow their precepts. Our secular culture, however, has never really
recovered from its anti-religious sentiments that first inaugurated the age
of civil societies (18th-19th century Enlightenment). Hence we are in a very
poor position to distinguish between the religiosities that support and enhance
civil societies, and those that despise them and seek their destruction. It
will not help to pretend that elements of Islam that have yet to make the step
into the civic agreement of voluntarism have already done so (the liberal "theyÕre
just like us" tendency); nor will it help to brand all of Islam with the brush
of its anti-modern tendencies (the conservative culture-war tendency). To distinguish
will take maturity, discernment, and an honest dialogue with Muslims of genuine
good will who may not yet understand the problems plaguing their troubled religion.